Our Schools/Our Selves: Summer 2011

The Voice of Nunavut: Learning from the Eastern Arctic’s education challenges

More than 10 years after its creation, although it has a government, policies and legislation in place which officially attempt to support Inuktitut, Nunavut lacks two essential features of any sustainable society: the protection of its language, and its own education system.

This collection of articles is certain to inspire, provoke, and refresh the way we look at the North.The focus of this issue of OS/OS, on language and education in the Eastern Arctic, demonstrates the intent to go beyond the policies that so often obscure what is actually happening on the ground. And, in so doing, it asks key questions: how do we look at education in Nunavut from down here in the South? How do we go beyond the microscope perspective to get a real sense of the education processes as they unfold? And how do we get access to “what works, what doesn’t, and why?”